At this time Simon was with the Avengers, who were helping him readjust to life among the living. He had been in suspended animation for a number of years, since the mid-1960s in fact, and had only recently come out of it. Not only did he have a rather understandable fear of death at the time, he had also missed out on pretty much the entire early feminist movement.
Ms. Marvel was a relatively new hero who had only begun making her mark. When she showed up to join them in battling Ultron, most of the Avengers were only too happy to have the help.
Carol from the start had been painted (with a rather broad brush) very specifically as a character with strong feminist sensibilities. Here she's contrasted with the Wasp and the Scarlet Witch, both of whom were apparently considered more traditional female characters.
So the fight with Ulton went well enough, mostly, and Carol accompanied the team on another battle, this one against Attuma. Just in case no one had picked up on it before, here we see that Simon was pretty freaked out at the notion of a heroine beating up on villains.
Also in the same comic, bonus panel of Hawkeye being a jerk!*
So Simon, who's been hanging back from the fight due to the aforementioned fear of death, sees that Carol is charging into battle. The sight of a woman going where he himself has been afraid to go is too much for Simon, and he enters the fray. Unfortunately, he isn't really thinking beyond his sense of chivalry, and ends up being less than helpful.
Of course all ends well, the battle is won, and the Avengers and Ms. Marvel return to their respective lives. But not before Carol takes the time to hit on Simon (having apparently forgiven his lapse in judgment).
I read these books, along with Ms. Marvel's own title, when I was a kid. At the time Carol's rhetoric didn't sound particularly odd--reading it now, of course, a lot of it seems pretty over the top.
It also occurs to me now to wonder why it seemed necessary at the time to differentiate between Carol-the-Feminist-Heroine and the Wasp and Scarlet Witch. Simon seems to focus on the physical combat thing, but the Avengers had had women in the group before who were skilled in fighting--Mantis, Moondragon, and of course the Black Widow, although I don't think she came on the scene until after Wonder Man "died." Certainly in the early Silver Age, Jan and Wanda were often typical Stan Lee women, flighty or frivolous or in need of rescue, but by the late 70s (when these books were published), both were fully capable of taking care of themselves in a fight. (I imagine that either one of them would have given Simon a verbal smack if they'd had any idea of the way he felt about women heroes. It just didn't come out until he saw Carol, who reminded him of his own perceived inadequacies.)
* A man out of his time, Simon's attitudes were somewhat forgivable. As for Hawkeye, not so much.
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